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WILLIAMSTOWN, N.J.—COPS Monitoring recently hired Joe Parisi to its leadership team as director of project management. Parisi has more than 20 years of alarm industry experience and will play a key role on the company’s management team by leading technological projects related to COPS’ network of monitoring centers, the company said.

“The last two years have been very dynamic for us,” Jim McMullen, president and COO of COPS, said in the announcement. “As a result of our sustained growth, we believe it’s best to narrow the areas of responsibility of executives to ensure we maintain high quality support and throughput from their respective departments.”

Parisi’s new role of director of project management is a newly created position, designed specifically for his skill sets, according to COPS. Key areas of the job will include facilities, alarm receiving equipment, and telephone system infrastructure. Parisi will also oversee the COPS technical support team that is designed to support COPS’ alarm dealer customers in troubleshooting communications related to signal transmissions.

McMullen explained that the restructuring strengthens further its management team as it “adds depth to the bench.” Parisi is one of three competent and focused leaders in COPS’ technical department who help position COPS and its customers for the future.

“My career in the United States Marine Corps has been the foundation of my technical and leadership skills that have been instrumental behind my successful 20-year career in the security industry,” Parisi said in a prepared statement. “My extensive electronics training in avionics lead to an electrical engineering degree from Rochester Institute of Technology. I joined Radionics [now Bosch] after graduation as a Research and Development Engineer. I was fortunate to be a part of the team of engineers who developed the state-of-the art D6600 central station receiver utilized by today’s leading monitoring companies.”

After his time with Radionics, Parisi shifted his focus of expertise to wholesale monitoring where he integrated new technology, trained operations personnel and field support, and converted central stations onto a single platform.

He has also volunteered with the Electronic Security Association. “I had the pleasure of leading the New Jersey Chapter as President of the New Jersey Electronic Security Association (NJESA), now one of the largest chapters in the country,” Parisi said. As NJESA president, the national ESA recognized Parisi as 2013 Chapter President of the Year at the Leadership Awards.

This year’s TechSec Solutions’ theme—Securing a Connected World—looks at how new technologies are being used in real-life scenarios and how they are leveraged by security professionals—integrators, consultants, manufacturers and end users—to provide cost-efficient and highly effective security services and solutions, all for the betterment of the entire security industry.

Last year, attendees gave the program strong marks, with 100 percent of attendees who completed our evaluation saying they “Would recommend TechSec to others” and “TechSec exceeded or met their expectations.”

Some of the highlights of this year’s program include two keynote speakers. On day one, Bill Bozeman, CEO and president, PSA Security, will deliver an Integrator State of the Union, giving a unique glimpse at the key technology trends impacting integrators and the industry today, while looking at which ones have the greatest potential and present the greatest challenges moving forward. And on day two, Rob Simopoulos, founder and president, Defendify, will present Cyber and Security: Together, a Shared Vision, looking at how physical and cybersecurity are coming together like never before, creating both challenges and opportunities.

In addition to two stellar keynotes, this year’s Mega Panel to start day two brings leaders from the industry’s top associations—the Security Industry Association (SIA), ASIS International and the Electronic Security Association (ESA)—together with keynote speaker Bozeman, head of the world’s largest system integration collaborative, to look at the current state of the industry, new trends and technologies that are impacting, disrupting and shaping the industry, and what the more successful companies are doing to stay relevant and profitable.

In support of this year’s theme, there are two sessions looking at “Securing a Connected World,” as well as sessions on securing, storing and leveraging data, and one on protecting critical infrastructure featuring Colby Meshey and James Ell from the Pentagon Force Protection Agency, who will join Kevin Didden, senior manager, Security Programs and Administration, MTA Bridges and Tunnels, and Joe Morgan, Business Development Manager for Critical Infrastructure, Axis Communications.

Plus, Gretchen Gordon, president and sales team transformation expert, Braveheart Sales Performance is presenting “How to Train and Retain a Tech-Savvy Sales Force” on day one. In this session, Gordon will explain how security companies, integrators and manufacturers can improve sales performance, giving attendees an effective strategy on hiring and retention, while showing them the importance of adapting to stay profitable and relevant.

And, as always, one of the highlights of the conference is the “20 under 40” Award Reception on the evening of day one, where this year’s class of 2018 winners will receive their awards and just have some fun by the pool. There will be several winners, both previous winners such as Simopoulos, and current winners, including TechSec Speakers Meshey (Pentagon), Didden (MTA) and Josh Cummings, director, Engineering Services, VTI Security, to name just a few.

All told, this year’s program has something for everyone. We hope to see you in Delray Beach Feb. 25-26.

Pivot3, the hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) performance and technology company based in Austin, Texas, announced that it experienced more than 50-percent growth in bookings in Q1-Q3 2018 over the same period in 2017, with significant growth among large enterprises and complex, mission-critical use cases.

With IT requiring automation and intelligence to manage increasingly complex workloads and multi-cloud environments, Pivot3 saw high demand for its hybrid cloud solutions. Pivot3 also experienced continued expansion with Internet of Things use cases, particularly with smart and safe city initiatives.

“Q3 2018 was remarkable for Pivot3, from our growth in sales and introduction of new products to the announcement of our global strategic partnership with Lenovo,” Ron Nash, CEO, Pivot3, said in the announcement. “Enterprises are demanding more from IT, and our growth indicates that the market is increasingly aware of Pivot3 and the power of our Intelligence Engine to simplify management at scale as well as deliver the security and resilience needed to support mission-critical workloads.”

Pivot3’s developments in Q3 2018 include:

• More than 50-percent growth in bookings in Q1-Q3 2018 compared to the same period in 2017, with 86 percent of new bookings in Q3 comprising large enterprises.• A 95-percent increase in average deal size in Q3 2018 over the 2017 average.• Nearly 65 percent of 2018 sales to date have come from satisfied existing customers expanding their deployments to include multiple mixed workloads. Additionally, more than 70 percent of new customers deployed multiple mixed workloads on Pivot3’s platform, indicating that customers are increasingly—and repeatedly—relying on Pivot3’s Intelligence Engine to automate and manage multiple mission-critical applications on a single platform.• Continued adoption of its hybrid cloud solutions, representing more than 60 percent of new sales in Q3.• Named a Strong Performer in Hyperconverged Infrastructure in The Forrester Wave: Hyperconverged Infrastructure, Q3 2018. Pivot3 ranked within the top three vendors in the current offering category and achieved the highest scores possible for the criteria of built-in security, customer support options and quality of operations and support.• Announced a global strategic partnership with Lenovo to develop, market and sell solutions optimized for mission-critical smart city applications and use cases, both in the core datacenter and at the edge.• Continued growth of mission-critical smart city initiatives, including with the City of Bogotá, Colombia, which is deploying a highly efficient Lenovo/Pivot3 solution to achieve maximum infrastructure efficiency and scale as its surveillance needs grow.• Launched Intelligent Edge Command and Control, a new ruggedized and SWaP-optimized hybrid cloud solution to support sophisticated analytics, VDI and IoT use cases for defense, intelligence and other extreme operations at the “tactical edge.”• Released a new large-scale IoT solution designed to support mission-critical deployments of 500TB or more with greater resilience, scale and ease of use, fundamentally altering the economic equation for customers in large IoT data-capture scenarios.• A diverse range of new customers, including numerous military and federal agencies as well as local governments, a nuclear research facility, multiple educational institutions, a large manufacturing organization and a major sports and entertainment complex. The top industry verticals represented in Q3 sales include government, logistics and transportation, energy and utilities, hospitality, and education.• Certified its infrastructure solutions for mission-critical IoT, safe cities and smart building environments operating with Milestone Systems video management software. This allows organizations to gain access to infrastructure proven to deliver the performance, resilience and scale required in mission-critical environments.

“Pivot3 has led the industry in supporting mission-critical use cases where security, resilience and management simplicity are required at enterprise scale,” said Nash. “As customers turn to IT to solve their most pressing business challenges, automation, artificial intelligence and machine learning will become key drivers in enabling the next wave of enterprise-scale digital transformation. Pivot3 is positioned to support this evolution with a foundation of Hybrid Cloud and IoT solutions for the enterprise’s most critical environments.”

Mike Leone, senior analyst from Enterprise Strategy Group, said in the Pivot3 announcement, “IT organizations need new levels of automation in their infrastructure to provide the resiliency, availability and low latency required to support rapidly expanding volumes of data and the proliferation of applications and business services. The key to Pivot3’s differentiation in the HCI market lies in their Intelligence Engine, which delivers advanced resilience and security, and automates manageability at scale for customers’ most demanding workloads.”

Apartment Guide, a resource for renters and part of the digital marketing solutions company RentPath, recently published a blog highlighting security as an amenity many renters are looking for.

The blog included data from RentPath surveys including an “online, blind survey of 2,000 renters … conducted by Egg Strategy in conjunction with RentPath in 2017, with the final analysis completed in February 2018,” and an “online, blind survey of 750 renters conducted by RentPath Research between November 10 – December 4, 2017.” In addition, the blog referenced The 2017 Kingsley Nationwide Renter Report, which was conducted in July 2017 in partnership with the National Multifamily Housing Council and surveying 269,332 renters.

Angie Amon, director of research for RentPath, talked with Security Systems News about the trends among these reports. “People are looking for their home. It’s not a car that they’re going to rent for a few days, or even a car they’re going to buy that they could easily get rid of if it didn’t work out. It’s their home, and the things that they’re trying to do is make it feel like home. They want to feel safe, they want to feel secure … and that it’s not a hassle to live there,” Amon said.

RentPath distributed surveys to people seeking apartments, specifically renters that were open to developments with 50 or more units. “We really drilled down into a specific segment of renter population,” Amon said.

Despite prompting survey takers to “think big” and be imaginative, many still put emphasis on practical conveniences like having a washer and dryer in their unit, Amon said.

RentPath also asked survey respondents to select an item that most interested them and one that least interested them out of larger groups. “Out of that came the gated access, the security measure,” Amon said, and this group was the highest at 35 percent. “That was the number one ‘most interested’ thing that people mentioned, and had the fewest votes of ‘least interested’ in.”

The company recognized another trend of people looking for app-controlled door locks, rating at 25 percent.

Property managers and companies could benefit from emphasizing the security measures at their properties, according to Amon. “It comes up over and over and over again in both the quantitative and the qualitative work that we do, where people talk about wanting to be in a safe area. And they define that in different ways, some of it has to do with what security measures are at the property … others define it by what kind of activity is going on in the area.”

The Security Industry Association (SIA) has identified and announced the 2019 Security Megatrends—the foundation of SIA’s signature yearly report defining the major trends and forces at play in the global security industry.

Forecasting of 2019’s top 10 Security Megatrends was based on survey data generated in September and October 2018 from top security industry business leaders, association leadership and key volunteers and speakers for Securing New Ground (SNG), the security industry’s executive conference, which is being held this week, Oct. 25-26, in New York City.

These trends—the top factors influencing both short- and long-term change in the global security industry—are expected to have sweeping impact on almost all businesses within the industry.

Cybersecurity was identified in the 2019 report as the standout trend shaping the security industry. By nearly 30 percentage points, industry leaders said cybersecurity’s impact on physical security solutions was the most impactful trend they were expecting to face in 2019. A resounding number of respondents also called for artificial intelligence (AI) to be recognized as a megatrend, noting that AI is becoming vital to supporting the heightened volume of data produced by modern security solutions.

Other new Security Megatrends emerging for 2019 include workforce development, the emphasis on data privacy, advancements in digital identity and the integration of security into smart environments like smart buildings and smart cities.

“Today, modern physical security solutions are comprised of IoT devices and sensors that generate high volumes of security data. Applying analytics and artificial intelligence systems makes this data more actionable and increases responsiveness for security systems users,” SIA chairman of the board Scott Schafer said in the announcement. “Cybersecurity continues to be at the top of the list of the most important trends identified by security industry manufacturers, systems integrators, security practitioners, architects and engineers, and SIA will continue to address this trend over the next year and in the foreseeable future.”

In addition to defining the latest Security Megatrends, the forecast for 2019 also identifies other forces at play in the security industry that may have a noticeable impact on some or all businesses, and the research identifies three potential areas of business disruption the security industry may face in 2019.

The official 2019 Security Megatrends report will be published in late November 2018 and available online for download and/or purchase. The 2018 Security Megatrends report is currently available to all members and non-members.

Each year at SNG, senior-level industry leaders and financial partners gather, trends are spotted, connections are formed and minds are opened. In addition to highlighting these Security Megatrends, SNG 2018 will feature keynote remarks by Jerome Pickett, senior vice president and chief security officer at the National Basketball Association, and Valerie Thomas, executive information security consultant at Securicon, and panel discussions on topics like the shift from smart cities to conscious cities, harnessing cyber-physical security technologies and how the changing residential security market is staying nimble.

Avigilon Corporation, a Motorola Solutions company, recently announced that its Avigilon Blue cloud platform is now integrated with SureView Systems Immix CS and Immix CC software, which will support professional video monitoring.

The Avigilon Blue cloud platform features patented self-learning video analytics that detect movements of people and vehicles and generate an alarm with a short video clip, allowing central station operators to more efficiently verify and respond to potentially critical events. The integration with Immix CS and Immix CC software will feature alarms with live and recorded video as well as audio transmission, the announcement noted.

"Video analytics-based alarm management will enable central stations to manage significantly more cameras and sites with fewer resources and help provide faster response to events, which ultimately creates a better monitoring experience for both the central stations and the end users," Ryan Nolan, senior vice president of business operations at Avigilon, said in the announcement. "With our advanced video analytics, the Avigilon Blue platform integrated with SureView software will provide our customers with a single point of control for security response and coordination."

The Avigilon Blue integration with SureView Immix CS and Immix CC software is expected to be available in November 2018, the announcement noted.

"At SureView, we develop a powerful monitoring platform to improve customers' ability to manage and respond to security events," Simon Morgan, CTO at SureView Systems, said in a prepared statement. "With Avigilon Blue's exceptionally accurate analytics and low false alarms, this new integration will further enhance the operational efficiency and value of professional monitoring services."

This updated integration improves signaling by utilizing a dedicated MASrecv I-View Now Receiver. Built in conjunction with MAS, these processes employ dedicated and proprietary signal types and signal formats which provide richer contextual information and video, the company said.

“We are thrilled to further our partnership with MASterMind and offer these enhanced features to monitoring stations and their customers. This integration enables the distribution of better information to end users, operators, and first responders,” Larry Folsom, president of I-View Now, said in the announcement. “We’re very proud of this integration allowing for true collaboration between all parties. Our ultimate goal is to catch the bad guy more often, while greatly reducing unwanted false alarm dispatches.”

The MASterMind Auto-Notification and Verification Interface with I-View Now integration provides mobile verification to central station customers. This process allows the end user to cancel the alarm, request dispatch, and call the monitoring center.

“A key value at MAS has always been to help alarm monitoring stations streamline their dispatching processes and provide better service to their customers,” Shin Voeks, general manager for MAS, said in a prepared statement. “The MASterMind integration with I-View enables users to conveniently cancel or confirm an alarm using their mobile devices, and allows monitoring stations to respond to alarms more effectively.”

A new benchmarking study of the cybersecurity practices and initiatives of global organizations provides insight into the cyber landscape today and moving forward over the next few years. The study, called The Cybersecurity Imperitive, was produced in partnership with ESI ThoughtLab and WSJ Pro Cybersecurity and is sponsored by Security Industry Association (SIA) and several other partners.

“As validated by SIA’s just-released 2019 Security Megatrends—highlighting the top factors influencing both short- and long-term change in the global security industry—security companies see cybersecurity as the dominant trend shaping the industry,” SIA CEO Don Erickson said in an email announcing the study. “Having these clear benchmarks around cybersecurity not only facilitates the advancement of cybersecurity within your own organizations, but it also allows firms like yours to deliver appropriate solutions to your customers.”

One key finding in the study is that digital transformation is exposing companies to higher and more costly cyber risks. For example, those whose cybersecurity practices do not keep pace with their digital transformation initiatives are more likely to see $1 million or more in losses from cyberattacks. The research showed that cyber risks rise dramatically as companies embrace new technologies, adopt open platforms and tap ecosystems of partners and suppliers.

“Companies need to make sure that their cybersecurity programs keep pace with their digital transformation effort,” Lou Celi, CEO of ESI ThoughtLab and director of the study, said in the announcement. “Cybersecurity should not be an afterthought. It needs to be integrated into the fabric of an organization’s growth strategy.”

According to the study, there will be an increase in cyber-threat vectors by 2020, including:• Attacks through partners, customers and vendors (247% growth)• Supply chains (+146%)• Denial of service (+144%)• Apps (+85%)• Embedded systems (84%)

Surveyed companies see high risks from external threat actors, such as unsophisticated hackers (cited by 59% of firms), cybercriminals (57%) and social engineers (44%), but the greatest threat lies with untrained general staff (87%). Another 57 percent of firms see data sharing with partners and vendors as their main IT vulnerability. Nonetheless, only 17 percent of companies have made significant progress in training staff and partners on cybersecurity awareness.

Another key finding is companies are boosting their cybersecurity investments. To cope with rising cyber risks, surveyed companies are increasing their cybersecurity investment by 7 percent this year and 14 percent next year. The biggest upsurge will come from platform companies, which are hiking their spending 59 percent this year and 64 percent next year. On average, companies with revenue between $250 million and $1 billion will spend $2.9 million next year; $1-5 billion ($5.7 million); $5-20 billion ($10.7 million); and $20 billion+ ($16.8 million).

According to the study, companies now use a variety of technologies to improve cybersecurity, such as multi-factor authentication (90%), blockchain (68%), Internet of Things (62%) and artificial intelligence (AI) (44%).

Security Systems News’ Class of 2017 “20 under 40” winner Ryan Fritts, CISO, ADT, said, "We are using AI in our access and entitlement management to analyze the behaviors of end-users and determine whether or not their behaviors are risky."

Over the next two years, studied firms indicated they plan to greatly expand the use of the following technology solutions:• Behavioral analytics (+1,735%)• Smart grid technologies (+831%)• Deception technology (+684%)• Hardware security and resilience (+114%)

The study also found that as corporate cybersecurity systems mature, the probability of costly cyberattacks declines. Cybersecurity beginners have a 21.1-percent probability of cyberattacks generating over $1 million in losses versus 16.1 percent for intermediates and 15.6 percent for leaders.

"Security is a holistic discipline. You need to manage both physical and cyber risks,” Joseph Gittens, SIA director of standards, and Cybersecurity Imperative study advisor, said in a prepared statement. “You could have the best physical security ever—guards, gates, guns and surveillance—but if someone can access your network from the comfort of their living room, it's not doing anything. The reverse is true as well. You could have a ton of cybersecurity but fail to lock down your physical space."

OGDEN, Utah—Last week, on Oct. 3, there was a test of the Presidential Alert system, which went out to televisions and radio as well as mobile phones. AvantGuard Monitoring, based here, noticed that there was a spike of false alarms—including glass break sensors and PERS button presses—linked to the test.

“Oftentimes, [when] we see a spike in a certain kind of alarms, they’re related to a storm or a localized natural disaster, and it generally affects a certain type of alarm like a security [system],” Justin Bailey, AvantGuard’s president and COO, told SSN. A simultaneous spike in security and PERS was very unusual for the company, he added.

The alert’s tone happened to match the frequency that some glass break sensors look for, AvantGuard said in an announcement, which caused the sensors to send false alarms. “It was a unique event for us. … As we started looking to see a common causality on the security side, an unusual number of alarms were [triggered by] glass break sensors. It’s not uncommon to have one of them in the buffer at the scale we have,” Bailey said. AvantGuard’s monitoring centers received about 70 glass break alarms that it can link to the presidential alert.

A member of AvantGuard’s team recognized the coincidence in the time of the alarms and the presidential alert, according to Bailey. “When you get a drop of signals, you know something is going on, because of the scale of how many alarms we received in that short time frame,” he said. “It was … part of our troubleshooting process to find commonalities and then get into causality. It was really just our good monitoring center leadership team that made that connection.”

AvantGuard received about 100 PERS alarms related to the presidential alert, as some seniors with PERS devices heard the sound of the alert and didn’t know what the alert tone was or if it was coming from their PERS device. “It was a matter of just talking to the subscribers as we connected to the two-way and—once we determined that they were ok—asking why it was that they had pushed their buttons,” Bailey said.

AvantGuard developed a system to address alarms that were likely false. “With the suspect alarms, we were able to partition them in a different queue, and then dedicate operators to work through those alarms that we believed were affected, allowing us to free up other operators to work alarms that we suspected … were actual, true alarms,” Bailey said.

“The reason we caught it and handled it so well is because we’ve already been prepared to deal with situations like that. So, I think it makes us more aware of challenges living in a connected world,” Bailey said.

The Security Industry Association (SIA) has named industry veteran Edwina (Eddie) Reynolds, president and CEO of Iluminar Inc., as the 2018 recipient of the inaugural SIA Progress Award, an honor presented by SIA’s Women in Security Forum celebrating individuals who pave the way to success for women in the security industry. The award will be presented to Reynolds during SIA Honors Night on Wednesday, Nov. 14, in New York City, in conjunction with the ISC East conference and expo.

“I am truly humbled to be the first recipient of the SIA Progress Award, and I want to thank SIA for this incredible honor,” Reynolds said in the award announcement. “I have been working in the security industry for over 25 years, and while challenges still exist, the industry has made a lot of progress, and I am committed to continuing to advocate for more equality and more diversity across the field. As influencers, leaders and companies across the security industry have a greater focus on the advancement of women, I believe we can truly empower women to be leaders and agents of change in their respective fields and shift the narrative in our industry.”

Reynolds has been the founder and CEO of multiple established CCTV lighting companies. She began her security career as an account executive for U.K. integrator Chubb Fire & Security in the mid-1990s and went on to work for Pinkerton Security, Rainbow CCTV and Sony. From 2005 to 2008, Reynolds was the U.S. partner for a U.K.-based CCTV lighting company, and she founded Iluminar in 2009. Reynolds has led Iluminar to develop award-winning solutions and be the lighting solution partner for several market leaders. In 2018, she was appointed to the SIA Executive Council, where she works with other security leaders to launch initiatives that support the growth and advancement of the security industry at large.

“SIA is proud to present Eddie Reynolds with the first-ever SIA Progress Award for serving as a longtime advocate and role model for women in the security industry,” Don Erickson, SIA’s CEO, said in the announcement. “Mentorship and thought leadership are critical to helping women grow in this field, and we applaud Eddie for her dedicated involvement in the industry and contributing her expert insight, knowledge and advice.”

Reynolds has been a longtime supporter of initiatives to support the advancement of women and overall diversity in the security and technology industries. As part of these efforts, she traveled to the University of Arkansas on behalf of the International Organization of Black Security Executives in early 2018 to speak to students about career development skills and job opportunities within the industry.

Reynolds recently contributed to the first women-authored issue of SIA Technology Insights with an article on the importance of external illumination systems when lighting for video surveillance and will speak on a women’s panel at ISC West 2019, coming up April 10-12 in Las Vegas, Nev.

In addition to presenting the SIA Progress Award, SIA will honor industry leaders at Honors Night 2018 with the George R. Lippert Memorial Award, the Insightful Practitioner Award, the Jay Hauhn Excellence in Partnerships Award and the Women in Biometrics Award. SIA will also honor the 2018 recipients of the SIA RISE Scholarship and the inaugural Denis R. Hebert Identity Management Scholarship.

Editor’s Note:Security Systems News is excited but not surprised to see Reynolds honored in this way, as SSN featured her in our annual Women in Security issue in 2016. You can read the profile here. And speaking on women in security, if you know of a woman who is making a difference in the industry, we would love to highlight her in our December Women in Security issue. Emails can be sent to: pragusa@securitysystemsnews.com.